The present invention relates to a technology for analyzing and saving an operation log of a computer user.
In order to learn computer user's interests, patterns, etc., it would be desirable to be able to monitor computer operations performed by the user via a mouse, a keyboard, etc. to find out what kind of data the user referred to, how the user processed the data, etc.
In electronic commerce, etc., it has been desired for the sake of effective marketing activities to determine client's or customer's interests, preferences and purchasing patterns, etc. Conventionally, a questionnaire has been used to collect information about service users'interests, preferences, purchasing patterns, etc. However, replies submitted to a questionnaire are not necessarily reliable because it is left to a user's discretion how to answer questions in a questionnaire and data obtained from a questionnaire inevitably reflects the way each question is asked in the questionnaire. Further, as it takes time to fill out a questionnaire, it is often the case that a lot of users simply do not submit replies.
Although there are numerous log analysis systems available, they cannot analyze operations arbitrarily performed by a user, his (her) behavioral patterns etc. because the systems operate based on an analytical mechanism prepared unilaterally by a service provider.
It has been possible to gather detailed information about accesses such as information as to which page of a Web site a user has accessed, by acquiring URL information issued on the Web by means of the user's Web browser and analyzing the thus acquired string of URLs. However, even though the aforementioned conventional system enables determination as to which page of a Web site was accessed, it is still not possible to ascertain which specific data in the page a user showed interest in, which data a user compared with which data, from what perspective a user compared the data, etc., nor is it possible to obtain a log of accesses to multiple different Web sites.
In the report “Management and Search of Media Object Utilizing Operation Log” printed in the journal “Information Media”, 28–15 (published on Nov. 29, 1996) [A-15], Jiro Suzuki and Yuzuru Tanaka proposed a method for describing an event in the form of a single sentence comprising such elements as (Who, When, Where, What, How) in an operation log of an Intelligent Pad. “How” describes an event such as “pasting”, “peeling”, “clicking”, etc. For example, when a user named Taro pasted a portion of data in a table on a chart to view the data, a single sentence “Taro, date, Chart, Table, Paste” is recorded in the log. According to this method, however, it is not possible to determine which portion of the table was pasted on the chart. Thus, such log information provided by conventional “How” is not sufficient for effective marketing activities.
An Intelligent Pad (IP) is an object-oriented software development and operating environment designed and developed by Professor Yuzuru Tanaka of School of Engineering at Hokkaido University, in which visual programming by linking objects to one another is viable. According to the IP, software is developed by synthesizing, disconnecting and reusing components called “pads” respectively consisting a model part and a view part and having a specific function. The developed software is also called a “pad” and is reusable for developing the other “pads”. A “pad” is a type of an object which functions as a basic unit encapsulating its inherent data and methods (functions) and is able to exchange data and messages with another pad via a common interface called “slot”. The details of IP are published in various literatures and the Intelligent Pad Consortium (Intelligent Pad Consortium, http://www.pads.or.jp/).